C: ForwardSlash Companion
by Ally W
Summary: After her husband almost puts her old laptop computer into the recycling bin, Nasutei reflects on how it, not only saved the world along with the Samurai Troopers, but became an indisputable friend and companion along the way. One-Shot.


Disclaimer: _Yoroiden Samurai Troopers_ and the characters of _Nasutei _are copyright by Sunrise © 1988, 1991. The _Toshiba T3200 _is a registered trademark of Toshiba Corp.

Note: This dose take place in the modern era (2010).

* * *

"The modern-day companion… what a lie!"

This phrase had been going through the mind of a woman, who was sitting quietly at a dining room table. The focus of her negative thinking was the Toshiba netbook computer that she was using to enter in her student's grades. This was the fourth time—this morning—that the computer she was working on had either frozen up or crashed on her. She just couldn't take it anymore. She yelled exactly what she was thinking to the inanimate object, believing that those words would shame the contraption into working like it should. However, the netbook responded to her comment by displaying a "This computer has had a fatal error…" message on a blue monitor screen. Frustrated, the brunette slammed her calculator on the table she was working on and slouched forward; placing her elbows on the table top and cradled her head in her hands. She had it up to her ears with some of these new, so called "better", computers that were out on today's market. They were built cheaply and this netbook was no exception. She got it as a gift, after her husband saw it being advertised in a store not far from his office. He said the window ad billed it as "The Modern-Day Companion"… but she was seriously beginning to doubt the claims.

"Nasutei… honey? Are you okay?"

The woman lifted her face out of her hands and focused her attention to a man that was standing in the dining room doorway; it was her husband. He first glanced at the blue computer screen before giving Nasutei a sympathetic smile. In his hands, he held something that resembled a small briefcase.

"Just another Blue Screen…" Nasutei responded. But, what seriously got her attention was object that her husband held. "Hay, that's my old Toshiba T3200. What are you doing with it, Yuusuke?"

The man nervously cleared his throat. "Well, you see… over at the engineering firm, they're doing an electronic recycling drive, sponsored by some of Japan's big electronic firms. The program is offering free gift coupons for people who bring in any sort of e-waste… and they're good at quite a few of the big name stores. I was thinking, since this dinosaur obviously looks like its seen better days. I though… well, you know."

A chuckle emanated Nasutei's lips. "Well, this 'dinosaur', as you put it, is still useful to me. I have files on it that I do access, like my database".

"You already have three laptops that you use on a daily basis… one of which I just got you last month", Yuusuke stated this fact while, at the same time, he gingerly hoisted the device by its handle, and set it on the table. "And they all operate this 'database' that you use for work, anyways. Surely, you can afford to toss this one into the trash. I mean, look at this thing… it's from 1987. Not only is it 23 years old, but it's also outdated. It still accesses 5 1/4 floppy disks, for crying out loud!"

Nasutei let loose a hearty laugh. Then, she looked at her husband and began to speak in a playful, half-mocking tone. "I know. And, it's heavy… And, it only has 1,024 kilobytes of RAM… And, there's no mouse… Or a CD-ROM… And, it cost me 52,000 Yen to replace its toxic battery that died 13 years ago…"

"I'm serious. Really!" the man chuckled as he put his hands on Nasutei's shoulders.

"No Yuusuke…" Nasutei replied as she patted one of his hands. "I appreciate the concern you have, but that little Toshiba stays right where it is. However, I'll go with you through the stuff that we really don't need, later tonight. I know we have a few cell phones that can go."

The man gently gripped his wife's hand. "I understand... this was your grandfather's laptop. Of course it must have a lot of sentimental value to you. But, don't you think you should…"

"Yuusuke, I said no", Nasutei said, gently cutting him off.

Yuusuke knew far too well, by the tone of the brunette's voice, it was futile to push the topic any longer. He knew that his wife was a huge computer buff. Not only was she a very talented programmer, but she also has amassed herself, over time, a small collection of older computers. For the most part, they were used for the summer-time education school that she volunteered for at the university she taught in—getting young kids interested in technical occupations. But, they were all for work use; she never got upset when people poked and prodded those machines. But, for some reason, this one laptop got special treatment. His wife seemed to spoil it like; almost like if it was their third child. It was always put on a sturdy shelf in her clothing closet with a dust cover over it, unlike the other units she would just haphazardly pile in the downstairs foyer closet. No one was even allowed to touch it, save for one other person; a fellow professor, and longtime friend of hers that taught history at the University of Osaka. She would always perform a yearly diagnostic on it and if anything was wrong she'd fix it, herself, immediately. Despite the fact she had more modern machines—which were far faster, powerful and not to mention cheaper to repair—she still had a strong desire to keep and access this hulking, archaic Toshiba. And, to this day, he still didn't understand why.

After hearing the chimes of the living room clock and noticing the time, the man placed the boxy machine next to his wife's work and began to gather up some black tubes and a briefcase that were leaning up against one of the chairs. "Well, I've got to go. I have a meeting with the other designers over our new aero-engine. Pray for me that our executive-chief like the concept!"

"I will, honey… I know I always do", Nasutei said she stood up from the table and gave her husband a kiss on the cheek. Then, the pair made their way to the front door, where Nasutei opened it for her bustling husband. After one more exchange of goodbyes, she stood in the door well while she watched Yuusuke load up his car and pull out of the drive and onto the road. When his car disappeared from her sights, Nasutei shut the door and made her way back to the dining room where her work still waited.

As she sat down, Nasutei's eyes went straight to the old computer that was lying next to the heaps term papers that she was grading. She could remember when her grandfather first bought this laptop. He wanted one for quite some time, mainly for convinces when he traveled to universities; instead of putting large amounts of time—and thousands of Yen—into making copies of data files. He could easily access them on command, with the university's newly acquired tool, the ARPANET. It wasn't until one of his colleagues at the university bought this exact same model then her grandfather decided to go Tokyo and get one. Nasutei remember that this was the first time she ever went to the Akihabara district—the heart of Japan's electronics industry. He was so proud when he got it; this thing was state of the art. Capacity. Speed. Mobility. It was a full-sized computer in a 4 kilogram box that could be easily carried. After all, Toshiba called it "The Spacesaver" for a reason.

Then, her thoughts went from her grandfather to the Troopers. During those days, this machine became even more powerful then she could have ever imagined. It had a 40-megabyte hard drive—very few people had anything of that nature back then. And, that massive hard drive was what let Nasutei download her grandfather's database about the Samurai Troopers from his school's computer—moments before his office was destroyed. It's advanced, chargeable lead-acid batteries allowed Nasutei portable accesses her grandfather's research while she was running around Japan looking for dormant Troopers after their first battle with Arago. All of that technology, which by today's standards was deemed useless, opened up thousands of pages of priceless information to the Samurai Troopers. The reliability of that laptop soon became the turning point between mankind's survival or total annihilation.

Nasutei quickly powered down the troublesome netbook she was previously working on and closed it. She took out a pen and some stick notes and wrote a message; a reminder for her to run a diagnosis on it later. After that, she pushed the newer unit aside and dragged the old laptop in front of her.

"I don't think he'll ever understand, will he?" Nasutei said to archaic computer, as if it was a living, sentient being. "Yuusuke and I just think differently, that's all. He's of a rational mind… and doesn't believe in legends like I do. Maybe if he saw what we did, perhaps."

Nasutei's mind bagan to wander. "Hum… the things we saw. Do you remember all those time? Like the time was traveled to The Netherlands with grandfather? Or to America with the Troopers? Remember all those adventures, even the bad ones where we didn't know if we'd be alive tomorrow? You even help to save the world, little buddy. People have forgotten about that… but, not me. You've been by my side for so long. You've always been my… well, in a way, my only true companion. You've helped me without complaint. You've listened non-judgmentally to all my theories, no matter how crazy they sounded… even to the Troopers, and they've seen some crazy things. Don't get me wrong, I love Yuusuke with all my heart. I confide in him so much… he's even met the Troopers and seen our database. But, he just explains off my research as a very through history lesson for my classes and you as just a keepsake. I've tried...".

Nasutei gazed at the laptop, almost like she was expecting it to answer back. "I know what you're thinking. He's just so stubborn, driven and exactly like me."

She ran her manicured fingers across a shallow, diagonal gouge that went clear across the top of the machine. A look of sorrow came to her face as she recalled how that got on there; it was during Ryou's first fight with Nazza, her grandfather was just murdered and she barely escaped the battlefield with her life, let alone with this laptop. But that look soon changed to one of mirth as she gently touched a crack on the lower left-hand corner, near where the keyboard was. Shuu put that there when he accidentally sat on it, while wearing his sub-armor, no less. That lug almost killed the battery and Nasutei almost killed him.

Nasutei gently pulled open the lid to her precious Toshiba and pushed the large, flat power button that was located on the front left side of the computer. A plasma flash appeared on the screen followed by two beeps and the clicking sound of the unit's hard drive. A smile played on her lips as the grinding noise gave way to a blinking cursor and then access to her DOS screen.

After this display, Nasutei started typing on her command prompt screen, searching her hard drive. As always, the original version of her grandfather's database was still on the computer. Though, over the years, she had done some extensive overhaul to his work and improved the database macros, Nasutei could never bring herself to delete the old files that her grandfather typed with his own hands.

While scrolling down the list of file folders with her arrow keys, Nasutei was surprised to see that the translation program that Touma wrote for her—to communicate with the Taguris—was still on the laptop. She chuckled to herself over this find, because she just had a live video chat with him about that same program three days ago. He wanted to know if she still had a copy, since his floppy disks, that contained the mother code, had degraded to the point where he couldn't even access them on his computer anymore. She typed in the proper DOS command to access the file. Much to her amazement, Touma's program had survived the test of times safely on the Toshiba's antiquated hard drive. She made a mental note to dig up some disks later on, so that she could transfer and send those files to her friend.

Another search of the C command brought up subsection folder entitled 'Security Data'. Curious about why such a cryptic-sounding title was on her system, Nasutei opened the section. In it she found myriad of word files that, according to the access tag, she had written. When she did a detailed check, Nasutei found out that they all had the modification date of '1991-06'.

"Oh… I remember, now", the woman softly whispered to herself. "That was a few weeks after I attended that UN Security Counsel meeting. I though I lost these a long time ago…" Her eyes quickly scanned through a lengthy word processing file about tests she did on the new armors and the many hypotheses she formed through these findings. She began to remember about how that was a strange year for her. After she attended that emergency security meeting at the United Nations and partially revealed the existence of the Samurai Troopers, she was greeted, at the doorstep of her grandfather's home, by a group of scientist and military staff affiliated with the US Pentagon and Japan's Self-Defense Ministry. Though she never revealed the Trooper's identities or locations, she did provide a very limited amount of information to appease there questions; these exact files. Her mind then drifted to the summer of that year. It seemed like every week she'd get a phone call from one of the Troopers; reporting about some new discovery they found pertaining to the new armor-gears they received from Suzunagi. Instead of traveling to Italy, she ended up spending her summer vacation painstakingly noting every little detail into a brand-new database that she had to write by hand. However, the workload also got a little bit easier, eight years down the line, when Touma decided to shoulder some of the burden of researching. After he got his masters—and then later doctorate—in history and began teaching at the University of Osaka, the Warrior of Tenku wished to assist Nasutie in preserving and updating her ongoing work. In fact, because of this collaboration, Nasutei and Touma have become the anchors which have kept the other Troopers in moderate touch with each other. The brunette made another mental note copy these particular files so she could back them up onto CD-ROM so she couldn't lose them again.

Nasutei let out a soft sigh and typed '-S' into her command line and powered down her antique of a computer. Though the laptop was off, the flood of memories still kept running in Nasutei's mind, like an endless loop. She knew that her husband would never understand, no matter how many times she tried to tell him the truth about just what was kept on this old Toshiba. Yes, Yuusuke loved her for who she was, both inside and out. And there was no doubt in Nasutie's mind that he was her one, true best friend. But, this hunk of plastic and integrated circuits has been—and will always be—her one, true companion.


End file.
